Watching
Jeff
Finlin onstage at The Greys, his sturdy frame in an attitude of
straining
readiness towards the microphone, I found myself fascinated, wondering
how and when he had discovered his extraordinary
voice.
Later, he told me that he had taken around ten years to develop it,
that
it was changing all the time and that by the time he reaches 60 he
hopes
it will be an instrument as special and distinctive as John Lee
Hooker's.

If
you don't
already know Finlin's work, it probably won't take you quite that long
to acquire a taste for it, but it may still take a bit of
persistence.
It'll be worth it, though. Starting his musical
career
as a drummer in the Boston post-punk scene, he has moved on to become a
songwriter of muscular precision. His songs are pitched
somewhere
between reality and poetic truth and he wrenches them from his throat
in
a voice powerfully reminiscent of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, but
altogether
his own.

The
ace Nashville
session guitarist Pat Buchanan, a somewhat dishevelled figure with a
boyish
mop top which we can only assume is a form of homage to his hero Paul
McCartney,
accompanied Finlin at The Greys. Their delight as they surprised
one another with what they told us was a nightly recreation of the
songs
was infectious and had the effect of lightening some of Finlin's
lyrics.
So, for the first time, I heard the humour and sweetness in his song
about
paternal jealousy, She's A Mama Now, and the tenderness in Sugar
Blue.
There was also room for tragedy with a majestic version of the suicide
story song, The Perfect Mark of Cain.

Buchanan's
relationship
with his guitar was so intimate, it felt almost intrusive to
watch.
There were times, as he coaxed and bullied it to make almost ethereal
sounds,
that it seemed to me he and the instrument were the same
being.
If they are, then I know just where the connection comes - it's at the
point where the little finger of his left hand splays flat from years
of
travelling up and down the fretboard.

Earlier
Buchanan
had played the axeman a little more when, with Finlin joining him on
the
drums, he presented us with some of his own genial, poppy
material.
The highlight of his set came when Finlin, appealingly donning his
reading
glasses to read the lyric sheet, joined Buchanan on vocals for a
growling,
menacing The World Is Flat.